Whilst waiting I’ve been looking at this, a document assessing competing bids to host the Santiago Network unfccc.int/santiago-netwo… which was finally agreed to go forward - to. E operationalised - at COP27 in Sharm-el-Sheikh.
The history of the “Loss & Damages” work program within the UNFCCC post the Paris Treaty is somewhat fraught politically which makes the decision making process on this question politically interesting. And the increasing incidence of weather disasters needing a “loss & damages”… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
As previously mentioned, recent history in relation to Loss & Damages makes the subject politically complicated. Especially given that the two contenders for the role come from opposite ends of the geopolitical spectrum.
The Glasgow COP26 in particular resulted in a very significant disappointment for the developing world when a Scottish Govt “Loss & Damages” facility was dropped on the final night following opposition from developed nations. This was only reversed in Sharm at COP27 after a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Thé meeting has now started and UNFCCC Exec Sec. Simon Stiell has just raised the subject of getting the Loss & Damages work underway at the top of his speech.
“We need to show that the era of implementation (of the Paris Agreement) has begun.”
Earlier Stiell said that we (humanity) are at a “tipping point” following a long gestational period of COPs. (which did not deliver enough action).
After remarks from the SBSTA chair we are now hearing from the SBI (Subsidiary body on implementation) chair who hails from Pakistan where there was a massive flood last year affecting 33 million people.
“When we arrived in Egypt Loss & Damages was not even on the Agenda and yet we ended up with a result.”
This plenary meeting is about agreeing on the Agenda for this #BonnClimateConference. Apparently it is not yet agreed.
The expectations for the agenda for this meeting was set out in a note to the conference some time ago.
Note that it’s not unusual for their to be disagreements on the Agenda in COP Meetings.
The consensus based decision making process makes agreement on the work program… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Classic COP they can’t even agree on the Agenda. But have agreed to begin nevertheless and come back to the Agenda later after consultations.
I’m going to move to check out the Loss & Damages session which I am now wondering whether it’s one of the agenda items in dispute.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
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Ok so this is a bit weird, but in a kinda chill way so do bare with me and and I will be happy to answer questions afterwards. It’s about a castle on a virtual island in a massive online role playing game called Evony and it involves a possible but speculative discussion about @elonmusk and @X.
All will be revealed but first a picture or four actually from the game. More will come.
Ok. So here’s what I think is going on in a nutshell. I think elonmusk has invested in a MMORPG: a “Massive Multimedia Online Role Playing Game” which is a bit of a mouthful, called EVONY.
I liked its Twitter ads and finally clicked. It’s huge. Someone else can do the business story here which I am sure is interesting too.
But the this bit is weird.
The mysterious knight on the red horse arrived this morning beside my castle and he had some treasure.
I hadn’t a clue who it was so I grabbed the treasure and tried to kill the horse and rider as that’s what you do. But we got smashed badly.
This interview with working class Uk financial markets savant Gary Stevenson - who has just published an autobiography - is seriously terrifying. He now has a @YouTube channel it seems and I’ll post a link shortly.
James O'Brien meets Gary Stevenson | LBC via @YouTube
His prognosis for the collapse of social democratic nation state finances due to the very sharp rise in income distribution inequality in the UK is horrific.
The consequences of unfettered transfers of money over decades due to neoliberal economics initially and more recently quantitative easing driven transfers of wealth from the middle class to the top 5% of the population is the cause of his concern.
It’s very hard to imagine what can be done politically to rebalance this.
Thomas Piketty’s thesis which among other things warned about all of this based on long term historical analysis of wealth inequality appears to be colliding with Western Civilisation in a manner that threatens the very foundations of that civilisation.
Gary’s YouTube channel which addresses all this is here.
Well this was actually pretty good… very little crazy right wing stuff - none in fact - some light criticism of wokeness and a consensus that Hitler was a socialist or communist dictator not a rightwing liberal fascist - mercifully no discussion of Greenland Panama or Canada
The bit at the end was actually quite nice and agreement about ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Importantly and probably deliberately there was very little to zero overt electioneering - a little bit of criticism of Weidel’s Spitzencandidat competition from Weidle but nothing extreme.
So nothing imo that could be seen as being election interference IMO - nor any reason for the DSA to be concerned or to get involved.
I didn’t even hear any particularly overt endorsement that went beyond that you might hear in passing in a podcast interview.
It ended with a discussion of mars - Elon’s favourite subject of conversation - which was quite interesting including a reference to the Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy series and Douglas Adams.
From Weidel’s point of view though there was a lot of positive moderate exposure of her party and probably around 200k + listeners. Which may give her a bounce in the polls.
Also the final segment talking about space was quite delightful and genuine and portrayed the AFD Leader in a positive light.
And I’d say the two of them have both found a new friend.
This is an update thread on this OCCRP story on @StateDept and @USAID funding for several large investigative journalism projects which has had a lot of downstream impacts it seems. Especially in Europe,
The underlying original story about govt funding for investigative journalism projects was initially flagged by @ryangrim.
This organisation - OCCRP that not many people seemed to have been aware of - was responsible for a series of outstanding investigative journalism consortia projects including the Panama papers.
This is a leaked rough cut of the NDR (German public broadcaster north west Germany) investigation into what happened With the OCCRP story.
It was never officially published but was recently leaked publicly by Wikileaks.
With the benefit of hindsight arguably Wikileaks ought to be the international organisation that coordinates these large investigative consortia, though it’s not clear that they want to do so.
What is clear from the fallout from all of this is that the system that was in place for running these consortia is no longer fit for purpose.